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Ziggy Stardust wrote:So do these soldiers have a memory of dying? What does this do to them on an existential level? Surely at least some proportion of them (those who died in the early months of 1945) were probably well aware that a German defeat was inevitable, as well. Would they even be willing to continue fighting without some magical rewrite of their memories?

Well if the guy setting this up can time travel he can just circumvent that by picking them up a few moments before they die instead and maybe implanting a false memory of them being wounded, returned to Germany and reassigned to this extra special mission. That's what I'd do.

Simon_Jester wrote: The point is that from a lawyer's point of view, Germany isn't simply going to accept without dispute the idea that all these German soldiers have unlimited right to 'return' to a German that is unrecognizable to them. A UN convention that can theoretically be interpreted to mean they do really isn't important in that regard. Because it is highly debatable whether these living Germans (who claim to be other men who are themselves long dead) really are authentic German citizens.

Eh, you've just given a 20 million plus army every reason to fight tooth and nail to carve a piece of land out for itself instead of trying to negotiate its way back to its homeland if Germany won't take its own people back. I mean, we could've sent in everything from German historians to British historians to Russian historians to French historians to the whole gambit of both the Axis and the Allies original countries under white flags to look at their equipment and get no less than "Holy shit that shit is legit equipment and we haven't seen that much working World War II equipment in top working order in...wow..." and...what then? Sure, it's circumstantial evidence. But there's a point where even in the courts where you have so much circumstantial evidence piling on...that when the friggin' DNA matches as well.

Have your war for what? Germany's pride? 1945 here we come again? Just on this side of the pond instead? Time for the USA to learn this lesson directly instead of just stumble on it?

Uh... that was kind of incoherent.

The point here is that the Germans cannot realistically be expected to take in twenty million people on short notice without some kind of orderly, organized admissions process. De-Nazification is going to be an issue (again). Just finding places for twenty million people to stay is going to be an issue.

If you try to force the Germans to do this on the grounds that some treaty which was never intended to force a nation to admit millions upon millions of refugees on short notice... They're effectively going to repudiate that treaty, or try and lawyer it to avoid having to admit millions of refugees on short notice.

Because that is a thing that, as a pragmatic issue, they can't do.

See, now that's something of a relevant argument. Yes you're Germans, you have the right to be here, but fuck you because we can't handle you. Not fuck you because you're confusing us. Since, you know, the relevant evidence is actually there and governments have turned cases of as few as one person away for no better reason than they've wanted to before.

Well, "Fuck you because we can't handle you" is not necessarily the German stance here. The point is, realistically, "we can't handle you" is the absolute truth, even with the best will in the world absorbing that many immigrants takes decades.

And if anyone tries to trot out some legalistic nonsense about why they have to handle all these twenty million men whether they want to or not*... well. The German government can reasonably reply that there is very real doubt about whether, legally, these people are actual German citizens, rather than being fakes or impostors.

*Just thought of this; what would the sudden arrival of twenty million fighting-age males do to the gender ratio in Germany? That alone would be a huge dislocation...

It might be worth it for the Germans (past or present contingent) to quietly negotiate with a few countries around the world for... placement, for lack of a better word. Most of them are PBI, so not good for much besides what civilian careers they may have had before they joined up (now ~70ish years out of date). They're still generally young and trainable though. The mechanics and engineers can probably find work; apart from the digital revolution and robotics, machines haven't changed a whole lot apart from being further refined past 1940s tech.

This could constitute, in effect, a pile of semi-trained factory workers. Even if you broke it down by the millions, that's possibly as much as twelve countries' worth of one million new employees. That could be either a very potent boost to struggling economies... or the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Honestly we've been focusing a little too much upon the immediate effect of the Germans upon the US, although that obviously was the original intent of the post. Global effects are a much more interesting issue now that we're past that.

Simon_Jester wrote:Well, "Fuck you because we can't handle you" is not necessarily the German stance here. The point is, realistically, "we can't handle you" is the absolute truth, even with the best will in the world absorbing that many immigrants takes decades.

And if anyone tries to trot out some legalistic nonsense about why they have to handle all these twenty million men whether they want to or not*... well. The German government can reasonably reply that there is very real doubt about whether, legally, these people are actual German citizens, rather than being fakes or impostors.

*Just thought of this; what would the sudden arrival of twenty million fighting-age males do to the gender ratio in Germany? That alone would be a huge dislocation...

So you're saying that no lawyer worth his salt can make a good argument that they're legitimate germans when they're walking around with this much legitimate german equipment that you'd have to convince every historian to lie through his teeth under oath to say it wasn't legit? I did say it's circumstantial, but wow, 20 million plus people with this much stuff piling on them. Cases have been made on much less last I checked. Can someone who knows the legal system say something here?

The terms of the RAR do not say anything about a grandfather paradox. And introducing a grandfather paradox would radically alter the terms of the discussion, detracting from the conversation the original poster wanted to have. So I'm assuming, no grandfather paradox.

Ok, fair enough. Assuming no grandfather paradox, then we have millions of clones running around and no idea what to do with them once they finally surrender. I imagine it would be quite awkward if they meet their older self...

The point is that from a lawyer's point of view, Germany isn't simply going to accept without dispute the idea that all these German soldiers have unlimited right to 'return' to a German that is unrecognizable to them. A UN convention that can theoretically be interpreted to mean they do really isn't important in that regard. Because it is highly debatable whether these living Germans (who claim to be other men who are themselves long dead) really are authentic German citizens.

So they would (under normal circumstances) be considered illegal aliens. But how do you start immigration paperwork if they have no country of origin? :-/

...Wait, what? I feel kind of strawmanned.

Plenty of lawyers could argue that they're German citizens.

The point is that the issue is definitely in doubt, because they represent twenty million cases of double identity. That may be easy for us to accept because we're used to science fiction full of clones or whatever, but it's not normal in the legal world.

The core of the German government's hypothetical argument* would be

*Which realistically they'll only be making if someone tries to foist off all twenty million Wehrmacht soldiers on them all at once while totally ignoring the major consequences that would have for Germany...

Well yes, clearly they believe themselves to be German citizens of the 1939-45 time period. Clearly they speak the language, by all evidence have memories consistent with their claimed identity, and carry large amounts of military equipment that is supposedly from Germany of that era.

But at the same time, clearly all those men and weapons did not just vanish off the face of the Earth at any point. Some of those people are still alive. The rest of them are dead and buried. The weapons were destroyed in battle, scrapped after the war, or (occasionally) stored in museums.

So it is not simply the case that these are our citizens of 1939 who were somehow transported into our present of 2014. If that were so, then there would be plenty of historical evidence for those citizens having vanished. The course of the Second World War would certainly have been quite different if the entire Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe had suddenly vanished in mid-war!

So while it is clear that these men are in some sense 'German,' it is not clear that they were ever born, under the names they think are theirs, in Germany. We know what happened to the men who were born under those names... they're all dead or in nursing homes. These new doppelgangers cannot be the German nationals born in the 1920s and earlier as they claim, they must have originated from some other time or place unknown to us.

This is not to deny them basic human rights, simply to recognize that their legal status is unclear and the logistical challenges of taking care of them are formidable.

And frankly, they have a point.

Let me illustrate this with an absurd example. Suppose someone just arbitrarily created three hundred million clones of, say, Ronald Reagan circa 1950. This is done using whatever magic was involved in making this RAR happen; presumably if it happened once, it can happen again.

Does that mean the US is required to absorb these hundreds of millions of Ronald Reagan clones, and thus become a nation that consists of 25% normal American men, 25% normal American women, and 50% Ronald Reagan? Despite the disastrous problems of overpopulation, overcrowding, and the fact that 39-year-old black-and-white movie actors are now the single largest demographic in the entire world?

Such a situation would result in the rapid degeneration and collapse of the American economy and way of life, even with the best will in the world on the part of the three hundred million Ronald Reagan clones.

And yes that scenario is deliberately absurd... but it's far from out of the question in light of what just happened in this RAR. If we say that Germany is required to accept all the Wehrmacht dopplegangers uncritically and instantaneously, simply because they believe and appear to be German citizens circa 1939-45... that sets a precedent, one that really isn't to anyone's advantage.

Somehow, there is now a process by which some unknown force or entity can create hordes of duplicates of various persons, living or dead, and bring them into the modern world. We have to have some orderly means by which these duplicates are integrated into our society.

If there were only a few such duplicates, we could just say "OK, they have free citizenship in whatever country they think they're from, and all questions of their true origins are irrelevant." But nations will be literally unable to do that, out of a basic necessity to protect themselves from chaos, when dealing with tens of millions of duplicates. The alternative is very dangerous for the host nation, and not really to anyone's benefit.

...Wait, what? I feel kind of strawmanned.

Sorry...didn't mean it like that. I was going by the assumption that they decided they're not citizens due to the fact they come from a parallel universe. If that is the case, how would they be handled? If they were handled the way illegal immigrants are today, then much of that revolves around their country of origin. If their country of origin simply doesn't exist in this reality...what then?

Well, actually that was more a reply to Gaidin, to be fair.

But yeah, basically they are "stateless persons," which is not quite the same as illegal immigrants.

Unless the Germans start taking them in out of the kindness of their hearts... but they can only do that so fast.

I am sure the US would use ample means to force Germany's hands for at least a significant number of them, as well as the world in general. As I said earlier there is no reason this has to take place instantaneously as opposed to years and there would probably be plenty who are happy not to go back.

No matter where they end up, they would cause huge troubles in Germany, anyway - these clones (IF 20 million people plus military equoippment suddenly vanished at the end of WW2, it would be public knowledge - the OP doesn't state that, so they must be clones) do believe they are the proper person - so everybody will be trying to get his belongings restituted frrom the people who claim to be their dexcendants...

I see summary legislation prohibiting such restitutions coming up right after the first claim, but people will still cause trouble.

I am not sure where this clone thing is coming from as the OP stipulates no such thing. When people go BACK in time nobody has a problem with accepting that the exact same entity exists twice in the same spot of a timeline. In fact all the time travel angst is exactly because of that.

Patroklos wrote:I am not sure where this clone thing is coming from as the OP stipulates no such thing. When people go BACK in time nobody has a problem with accepting that the exact same entity exists twice in the same spot of a timeline. In fact all the time travel angst is exactly because of that.

It's a thing about direction - when I go back in time to visit my yougner self, it's fine to have more than one present. If I stay around, I will see my younger self leave one day, and I will be back to the only version, just a bit older - there is no presence gap.

But when I move FORWARD in time, there will be no me present to meet, except for the case that I move back to my original timeline after meeting myself to be there to meet. Nice paradoxon - see "Bill and Ted's excellent adventure" for further reference.

But then, my proper-time self will already know that I'm going to be there, for he has been there to meet himself in the future.

Thus, if they were time-travellers FORWARD you would have following options:

a)They just went there - 20 million people plus all equipment will suddenly have vanished, and the world would be wondering to that day where they all went to and go "OH! THAT'S where they went!" the moment they appear in the USA.

b) They went there, lost the fight, and went back. This means most of Germany knew this was going to happen and kept quiet for the last decades, and nobody else cared for the fact that a lot of soldiers were suddenly dead and a shitload of equipment blown up for no reason at the end of WW2 (those who died and stuff destroyed during the US invasion simply suddenly showed up dead and destroyed or were missing when everything shifted back to home-time.)

This would also raise the question - if they are also able to move back in time (and across space in order to show up in the US), why didn't they do it right then, and show up in the USA of 1920 with their huge-ass invincible army?

c) everything is a copy - which is why we didn't miss the people/stuff in our timeline, for they never left it.

LaCroix wrote:This would also raise the question - if they are also able to move back in time (and across space in order to show up in the US), why didn't they do it right then, and show up in the USA of 1920 with their huge-ass invincible army?

Or, for that matter, not bother traveling through time, or through space except by purely mundane means such as walking.

Then they could just use the massive, lavishly supplied 20-million-man army to crush and defeat the much smaller Allied armies surrounding them. Even the 1945 Red Army would have broken if it had to fight twenty million men, including the resurrected forms of all the men it had killed in the previous four years combined.

c) everything is a copy - which is why we didn't miss the people/stuff in our timeline, for they never left it.

This is the only credible explanation from the point of view of the target world of 2014 US, assuming Zor didn't rewrite history in the original post by having all those Germans vanish in the middle of the war and leaving the Allies (and Hitler) to wonder where the hell they just vanished to.

Either the time-traveling Germans are duplicates, created from the real Wehrmacht and its equipment, through some unknown process...

Or they're from some sort of parallel universe where the Allies are now standing around scratching their heads and wondering where the hell the German Army just went.

Simon_Jester wrote:Or they're from some sort of parallel universe where the Allies are now standing around scratching their heads and wondering where the hell the German Army just went.

They are from a parallel universe.

Zor

Zor wrote:

Simon_Jester wrote:Or they're from some sort of parallel universe where the Allies are now standing around scratching their heads and wondering where the hell the German Army just went.

They are from a parallel universe.

Zor

There is just as interesting question. How would parallel world allies react to the German military simply vanishing and I assume leaving behind several million women and children.